Nelson Palace Theatre

Opening on 13 December 1909, the Palace Theatre & Hippodrome seated c.2,000. The architects were the Liverpool and Burnley practice of Matthew, Watson, Landless & Pearse. John Moorhouse & Son were accountants for the Nelson Palace & Hippodrome Company, and William Benson the managing director. The Palace was a variety theatre until 1922 when it became a super cinema. It then went over to repertory until the 1940s, later becoming a bingo hall, as which it closed in July 2009.

The exterior of the theatre was altered for road widening in 1979, removing the corner square-towered entrance and shops, and leaving only the brick side walls of the auditorium. The interior, designed and decorated by plasterwork specialists A R Dean & Co, had slightly curved balconies, their fronts divided into panels with fine plasterwork cartouches. The upper balcony directly abutted the side walls, with the decorative treatment of the front continued along the walls as panels and cartouches. The first balcony had short slips running into the principal visual feature of the auditorium: a single box on each side set between giant ionic columns supporting an open-topped segmental pediment, all richly decorated. Rectangular proscenium with an enriched frame. Flat ceiling with an enriched circular central panel and plasterwork bolection mouldings.

Although the level of the stalls floor had been altered and the stage given a false ceiling, the theatre building as it stood in 2009 would still have been restorable to theatre or alternative use. Despite campaigns in support of this, the building was purchased by the Local Authority in 2009 for demolition and use as a temporary car park, as part of a Masterplan for the town centre of Nelson. The theatre was subsequently demolished in October 2010.